Background

Culture in Switzerland

Despite (or perhaps because of) its great diversity of cultures, Switzerland has been somewhat more lax in developing its cultural institutions than many of its surrounding neighbours, such as France and Italy. Since the Swiss state did not come into being until the mid-19th century, it had no cohesive sense of itself as a culture until relatively recently. Not sharing one common language did not help the situation either, as the conflicting cultures of the German, French and Italian settlers remained relatively separate and people liked the safety of sticking with the familiar and the traditional. This is changing slowly, and the Swiss Federal Office of Culture